An editorial argument in Foreign Policy titled The Smart Way to End ‘Pay to Slay’ written jointly by David Makovsky, Dennis Ross and Lia Weiner could not have been more off the point had they tried. They did correctly note that the aid the United States earmarks for the Palestinian Authority (PA) is intended (our denotations) to be, “divided into three baskets. The first basket, consisting of roughly $70 million, goes to electricity costs in the West Bank and medical treatment. Approximately $25 million of this basket serves to reimburse hospitals for medical care of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.” Also, “The remaining $45 million of this basket is paid directly to Israeli electricity companies to settle the PA’s electricity debts for services to PA buildings and debts accrued by Palestinians.”

Lia Weiner, David Makovsky, Dennis Ross

They then go off the rails by claiming should this money be cut, then the PA would be required to take monies from other uses to pay these debts. The reason these funds are paid directly to the necessary recipients is because the PA never paid these debts and had this practice continued a number of Israeli hospitals would have financially collapsed partially due to providing the free treatments of the PA and Gaza patients and the Israeli electricity company was intending to cut off all service due to overdue, by numerous years, payments which they were no longer going to stick the payments due to their Israeli customers.

Their next notation is, “The second basket of $85 million consists of U.S. aid that is tangentially related to the PA. Most of these projects pertain to roads, water desalination, education, and good governance.” This is a bigger joke than the shovel ready road, bridge, highway and infrastructure repair jobs that President Barack Obama promised the American people in his first term. These vital infrastructures are often repaired due to necessity by Israel and the waste and trash treatment by the PA is intentionally done in the most ecologically damaging manner possible. They regularly pollute ground water and then blame Israel for the tainting of wells their own people are dependent upon, as they get no direct water from the PA due to disrepair or simply not being attached to the water supply. Israel attempted to assist but when workers, including Arab Israelis, were shot upon, this work ceased unless performed under IDF guards. The PA then protested about the invasion of their areas by the IDF to the United Nations and Israel was coerced in removing the protection and the workers. We will leave it to your imagination what the next accusation was against Israel about not completing promised repairs.

The final basket is more tragedy than aid as they tell it as such, “A third basket, made up of the remaining $106 million, goes directly to projects that are completely independent of the PA. These include various educational initiatives and private sector development. One of the notable projects in this basket is headed by the U.S.-based Mercy Corps, which aims to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Gazans by improving economic growth, education, and health in the Gaza Strip.” Any private sector development goes over 75% to Mahmoud Abbas’s three sons and their numerous construction and other infrastructure companies. Further, there are kickbacks to Abbas and his cronies for every dollar spent thus often doubling or tripling the cost of any project and the enrichment of the PA and Fatah hierarchy. But these are their minor cost arguments.

The rest of their argument is that any cutting of United States aid would adversely affect the poor Palestinian Arab people. They argue that these are a people who have no control over their leadership despite the fact that they overwhelmingly elected them in 2006 and Abbas in 2005. Further, if new elections were to be held to find a successor to Mahmoud Abbas, the two leading candidates are Fatah’s Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader who is currently serving five life sentences plus additional twenty years in Israel for a myriad of lethal acts of terror and Ismail Haniyeh who is the former leader of Hamas in Gaza. Further, a minimum of seventy percent would cast their votes for the two leading parties in the Parliament, Hamas and Fatah (in that order) with another approximately ten percent voting for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a potentially even more radical terrorist group. Making their argument that the people are victims and not part of the problem is further undermined by a July 2017 polling by the Palestinian Center of Policy and Survey Research headed by Dr. Khalil Shikaki, the well-respected and known worldwide Palestinian pollster, where, “91% are opposed to the suspension of PA payments to Palestinian security prisoners (a euphemism for convicted terrorist) in Israeli jails; only 7% support such measure.”

Perhaps we should just cut to the chase and take everything down to the ground and forget high principles and grand eloquence. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is in all actuality and honesty the substitution by the Arab Islamic world for the Arab-Israeli conflict done in order to make Israel appear to have the power and numerical advantages instead of Israel as David and the Arab world as Goliath. Their propaganda ploy had worked to the best of their hoped intentions with Europe and the left worldwide lining up behind the poor, downtrodden, unfortunate Arab victims and pulling all sympathy away from Israel. Now the Arab world can berate Israel and feel good about themselves and read in the Western media how they are so feeling and taking the side of the poor, downtrodden, unfortunate Palestinian Arab victims instead of reading how six Arab nations’ armies crossed the Israeli borders outnumbering Israel a hundred planes to one and five thousand men to one and five hundred tanks to one and then read a week later how Israel miraculously survived and even defeated these combined forces. The reality is those same six Arab nations are simply biding their time waiting for the perfect moment to pounce across the Israel borders after using the Palestinian Arab areas as staging zones claiming to have entered these zones to protect innocent victims of Israeli hegemony. There is the reality as simply as we can state the truth which nobody desires to say.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, and let us stop being rubes for a plain case of Taqiyya and call this what it is, the Arab-Israeli conflict is about two completely opposing worldviews and positions. The Israeli position is and always has been peace. Israel surrendered 78% of the British Mandate to provide the Arabs with a homeland which we today call Jordan whose population is 80% Palestinian Arabs, if that terminology is to have any true meaning. Then when the United Nations voted on November 30, 1947, to further divide the British Mandate resulting in the Arabs gaining another 11% and Israel getting only half of the remainder after Jordan, also 11% with two-thirds of the Israel portion being Negev Desert, Israel agreed while the Arabs rejected starting an Arab-Jew Civil War in the remaining 22% as a preemptory start to the ensuing May 15, 1948, Israel independence marred by those six Arab armies and numerous militias attempting to eradicate the Jewish State at her inception. Israel is said to have won, survived would be more accurate as when the Arabs rejected the General Assembly Resolution 181, that resolution basically ceased to exist leaving the entirety of the 22% of the remaining British Mandate, as promised by the Churchill White Papers, to the Jewish State presumably backed by the British Crown, though you would have had a hard time believing this as many British as well as Nazi officers from World War II advised the Egyptians and Jordanians standing together all but side-by-side. The result was Israel lost Judea and Samaria to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt and both nations flooded these areas with Arab refugees and other Arabs they wished to reward with land or simply displace from lands they held. The Jews in these areas were thrown from their homes and properties and sent to Israel, if they were fortunate.

Then there were the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War which were both initiated by the Arab forces and had numerous armies against Israel, yet Israel managed to prevail in these wars. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza despite Egypt’s illegal occupation of Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace and offered Judea and Samaria back to Jordan despite Jordan’s illegal occupied for almost twenty years of these areas. Egypt and Jordan resigned their illegally occupied areas but refused to allow their citizens to return from these areas knowing they would cause a demographic nightmare for Israel as well as a security nightmare. The Arab-Israeli conflict comes down to one simple fact, the Arabs refuse to permit Israel to exist. Israel, by her actions, is not attempting to conquer Arab lands, their usual claim. Israel only seeks to retain her 22% of the British Mandate and is willing to permit the Arabs in Gaza to become a nation, Hamasatan or West Iran, choose whatever name they wish, and allow semi autonomy for the Arabs in Judea and Samaria in Areas A and B while Israel retains most of Area C. Israel cannot permit the Arabs to have an independent state along the 1949 Armistice Lines (ala Green Line aka 1967 Lines) as that would place Arab rockets on the crest of the highlands overlooking the central plains of Israel which includes around three-quarters of her population and industrial zones as well as her main international airport. Truth be told, if the world were honest, as they were when creating Pakistan and millions were relocated from one area to the other and vice-versa, they would allow the Arabs to sell their properties in Judea and Samaria and even receive a relocation allowance from Israel and have them relocate to Jordan, Egypt, or whatever Arab nations or other nation willing to house them and end this impasse once and for all. But the world is not honest and as we have stated, they want to have Israel face these crippling problems with the hopes that Israel will fail before the pressures and thus appease the Arabs.

Plain English, the Arab-Israeli conflict are two implacable enemies, not prospective peace partners. The Palestinian Arab leadership and the people themselves have stated that the only solution that they will accept is Israel either eradicated or under Arab rule and every Jew dead. That is not something which can be settled over any peace process in all of history. The Arabs, like the Europeans, spent half their time stealing wealth from the Jews or murdering them and the other half living in an uneasy peace with an additional tax, the Jiyza, placed on the Jews as Dhimmis. Now that the Jews have their homelands returned and rule themselves the Arabs no longer can collect the Jiyza, the Jews are no longer Dhimmi but are instead proud and armed, something not permitted Dhimmi, and the Arabs cannot accept that they were defeated because since they left Mecca and Medina their book, the Quran, guaranteed they would rule the entire world, destroy the Jews and never ever lose a war. Europe is about to learn this lesson of how it is to have Arabs living within your society and desiring all of it for themselves and you enslaved or dead. Europe, learn from Israel, lighting candles and listening to the Arabs sweet songs of commiserating over your loss while handing out sweet candies to celebrate in private is not exactly a recipe for survival. Your ancestors understood Arab Muslim desires to conquer their lands and fought back sometimes successfully and others not so much which is why we are having the crazed discussion about Jews and Christians having no claim to Jerusalem. These are both societal struggles and only one can survive within any national boundary. As an object lesson, allow us to close with a little tale about the Camel and the tent, it is an Arab tale told where they are to learn from the camel and to never be that Arab.

It was a cold winter night. An Arab was resting in his tent when his camel peeped inside and asked, “Master, it’s very cold outside. Please allow me to put my head inside your tent.”
The kind master took pity on the poor animal and agreed to the camel’s request. A little later, the camel asked, “Master, please let me put my neck inside your tent as well.” Once again, the master allowed him to do so.
Next, the camel asked if he could put his forelegs in and again the kind master agreed. Very soon, the camel was completely inside the tent. But the tent was too small for both the master and the camel.
Finally, the camel asked his master to leave the tent so that he could be more comfortable. By now, the master was very angry and turned the camel out in the cold again.

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